INSIGHTS


Cover Image credits: Sophie Monsarrat | Rewilding Europe

While many companies are already taking comprehensive measures to minimise the effects of climate change as far as possible, it is also true that climate change is inevitable in the near and distant future. This has already become noticeable in large parts of Germany with an increase in extreme weather events such as the flood disaster in the Ahr valley in 2021, numerous hot summers in recent years, or the constant rain and flooding at the beginning of this year. Companies should therefore address the risks that could arise from climate change and the associated increase in extreme weather events, for example at their different sites, as early as possible.

Registration is now open for the GBCI Circle event for 2024. You can register here. EnviroSustain is proud to once again be a sponsor of this event which will be held in Athens, Greece. The event will run from the 17-19 April and the three days will be packed with a welcome reception, sustainable building tours, experiences, and learning sessions. After such a great experience last year in Barcelona , we can’t wait to travel with the team again. As we avoid air travel as part of our ESG Policy, the ES team will be travelling to Athens by land and sea over the course of two days! This involves the night train from Munich to Roma (or alternatively to Bologna), train to Bari, then the ferry overnight from Bari to Patras and to finish the bus to Athens. We look forward to sharing our journey with you on social media. GBCI Circle is designed to provide networking opportunities and education sessions for Europe's LEED consultants, property owners and managers, building experts and consultants and all of those interested in sustainability within real estate. The 2024 program focuses on the future of Healthy Human Habitat Venues include The Piraeus Tower (pursuing LEED Platinum and WELL certification), The Lighthouse (LEED Platinum), The Ellinikon (pursuing LEED, WELL and SITES), The National Gallery of Art (2 x LEED Silver certifications).

With the start of a new year comes the beginning of a new GRESB reporting period. EnviroSustain has been supporting clients with GRESB submissions for almost a decade now and we are pleased to see participation growing. The GRESB portal will open on 1st April but now is the time to begin prepping your team and collecting data. As ESG reporting gains more momentum in the mainstream, changes are needed to keep up with current developments. The Real Estate and Infrastructure Standards Committee works to gather feedback and make recommendations on changes to the GRESB Foundation Board.

The annual Global Risk Report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) presents a comprehensive analysis of current global challenges. In its report published in January of this year, the WEF warns of a "foreseen duo of dangerous crises", referring to the duality of climate and conflict-related challenges. Respondents from academia, business, government, the international community and civil society see climate change-related risks in particular as a key global challenge in the long term. According to the survey, the four most highly rated risks over the next 10 years are: extreme weather events, critical changes to earth systems, loss of biodiversity and the collapse of ecosystems. In addition, current crises and conflicts such as inflation, the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Palestine make many respondents pessimistic about the coming years. If implemented consistently, ESG guidelines can help to reduce the negative impact of companies on the environment and thus mitigate climate change-related risks by creating a sustainable business environment. In 2024, numerous new EU regulations will come into force to make ESG reporting more transparent and standardised. The aim is to oblige companies to be more transparent and accountable with regard to their environmental impact.

We are all increasingly aware of the pressing need for environmental sustainability and as biodiversity disclosures gain momentum , the Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) serves as a blueprint for integrating nature-related disclosures into decision making and existing mandatory reporting requirements. TNFD, like the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), operates as a voluntary disclosure framework. However, we hope that some governments and regulatory bodies will begin to incorporate TNFD recommendations into mandatory reporting frameworks. For organisations, voluntary adoption of TNFD is a proactive step towards staying ahead of potential regulatory changes and investor demands. By embracing TNFD early, companies can gain a competitive advantage and demonstrate their commitment to environmental responsibility.

With all the good biodiversity gives us and our environment, you would hope that it is sufficiently protected and supported by legislation. Not only in Europe, but also worldwide. As part of the European Green deal approved in 2020, the Nature Restoration Law is the first of its kind to cover the entire continent in Europe. Sadly, 80% of Europe’s natural habitats are in poor condition, but the proposed Nature Restoration Law will help to turn the tide when it comes to the protection and rejuvenation of European biodiversity by two 2030 and 2050 milestones.

‘Biodiversity’ is known as ‘the variability among living organisms from all sources including, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; including diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems’. According to this report by the World Economic Forum, Biodiversity equals around $44 trillion in economic value (more than 50% of global GDP), making biodiversity one of Earth’s most valuable assets. Despite the massive amount of value biodiversity provides us, our global loss of biodiversity over the past 50 years has been significant, and 80% of that global biodiversity loss is caused by the built environment, agriculture, and energy/extractives. Sadly, a byproduct of advancing our own environments is that we’re destroying the Earth’s natural ones at the same time. This is because of many factors, and IPBES notes five main drivers: Habitat loss Over-exploitation of natural resources Spread of invasive species Climate change Pollution

Amongst all the policies and jargon out there, it’s easy to forget why it all matters and what the overarching goal is, so let’s take a moment to think about it. The pressure on Earth’s resources is becoming unbearable. Every year, Earth Overshoot Day (the annual date that marks the point when humanity uses more biological resources than the Earth can regenerate within a given year) creeps earlier and earlier. Extreme heat events are becoming more common with forest fires on the rise; species are dying due to habitat loss and food scarcity; our seas are rising and warming leading to devastating floods and enforced migration. All of this and we’re still projected to exceed 1.5 degrees of global warming, despite the 2015 Paris Agreement and subsequent UN promises. In short, we need action, and we need it yesterday.

In February 2023, EnviroSustain announced a long-term partnership with Rewilding Europe. This collaboration will see a portion of the EnviroSustain turnover supporting rewilding initiatives for the next ten years, as well as pro bono advice on rewilding-related buildings in the network- such as new offices and rewilding centres. In June, Dr. Birgit Memminger-Rieve, MD at EnviroSustain, and Ingemar Hunold, Partner at EnviroSustain, met with the Rewilding Oder Delta team to provide support and advice for their newly established centre.

This April, EnviroSustain was excited to attend GBCI Europe Circle in Barcelona. We were once again pleased to be sponsors of the GBCI Europe event.

The 20th March marks World Rewilding Day 2023 and people across the planet will be celebrating by raising awareness of the rewilding practice and why our world is in dire need of it. As a partner of Rewilding Europe, we would like to give you some background on the topic of rewilding.

EnviroSustain is proud once again to be one of the sponsors for GBCI Europe Circle.

EnviroSustain is excited to announce a new ten-year partnership with Rewilding Europe. Rewilding Europe is an independent, non-for-profit foundation that supports rewilding landscapes across Europe, showcasing rewilding in action, building momentum and helping to reconnect people with wild nature with great success. 

Another year has passed and we are sadly still in the grip of the climate crisis. However, at EnviroSustain we continue to do as much as we can to tackle the crisis and 2022 was no exception. We set a goal at the start of 2022 to increase our positive impact as a business and we are really proud to say that we have done that. As a company, we have kept up with our regular donations to environmental and social causes that we support and we have also successfully completed our ‘impact of the month’ campaign. You can read more about the causes we supported in this blog . As a result of this campaign, we are currently getting ready to announce an exciting new partnership for 2023 and beyond. More information about this will be released shortly – check back for more details. ES also completed 12 months as a ‘climate friendly workforce’ with Ecologi, with a carbon reduction amounting to 188.7 tonnes of CO 2 e and have planted over 22,000 trees through their projects. Read about our activities with Ecologi in this blog post . New year, fresh opportunities We have many big plans for ES in 2023 including: More focus on providing consulting services that result in a positive impact within the built environment Expanding our ESG services to include ESG strategies and more support for ESG and impact reporting A bigger and better ESG report to encourage and inspire you on your own ESG journey A new website to showcase ES as a great company to work with and for A very exciting new partnership to be announced soon Team activities every two months to ensure the team stays invigorated and connected A big year for ESG and Sustainability While we work on all of that, we will also be keeping an eye on ESG and sustainability considerations for the real estate industry. Some of the things we think will be of most importance this year include:

In our 2021 ESG Report, one of our goals was to ‘create more impact’. So in January 2022, we began our ‘impact of the month’ initiative, where each month we chose to support a different charitable cause aligned with our mission or values. These impact activities are in addition to the following initiatives that we already support with regular monthly donations.

It’s been a year since we launched our Ecologi subscription on our 20 th business anniversary, so we decided to review our progress and share the impact we’ve had. We kicked off our subscription by planting 20,000 trees in celebration of our anniversary. These trees were planted across costal mangroves in Mozambique and Madagascar. You can read about this here. At the end of 2021, we became a Climate Positive Workforce, offsetting all business and employee emissions, including personal carbon footprints. Ecologi enable companies to do this through a monthly subscription that funds reforestation and other carbon avoidance projects such as renewable energy generation, clean cooking stoves, forest protection and access to clean water.  Our total carbon reduction amounts to 188.7 tonnes of CO2e, which is equivalent to 145 long haul flights, or 468,165 miles driven in a car!

The results of the GRESB Real Estate assessment for this year are finally out. This year saw the largest number of submissions ever, with 1,820 entities now participating worldwide . Significant growth was once again focused in Europe with Germany passing the 110-participants mark, with a 34% growth in participation. ES is pleased to have supported clients on the reporting of 35 funds this year, an increase on last year of 25%. This covers $22,885.37 million of assets under management. We are also extremely pleased that the average fund score increased by 12% and two clients achieved a four-star rating. We have found this year that funds with structured data management processes achieve a better overall score. This is also supported by having a dedicated person that manages the whole process, an early start to data collection, regular meetings with the team and early tenant involvement. With a 20% growth in participation for the GRESB assessment, the benchmark now covering almost 150,000 individual assets. This growth in Europe and particularly in Germany is reflected in the work we have been focusing on with our clients and we expect growth of our ESG services to continue in the coming year. Congratulations to our clients on another year of improvements, and to our GRESB team working tirelessly to get the assessments over the line. Now it’s time to start planning for next year!

Greenbuild hosts the largest annual event for green building professionals worldwide where attendees learn and source solutions to improve resilience, sustainability, and quality of life in our buildings, cities, and communities. This year, Greenbuild 2022 will take place in San Francisco, CA. EnviroSustain has supported the US Green Building Council and GBCI for a number of years now, and we are pleased to once again be involved in their education workshops at Greenbuild. Ingemar Hunold, Partner here at ES, will be speaking at the following workshop. Green Building, ESG, and Sustainable Finance: New Opportunities for Impact Tuesday, November 1 st 2022 9:00am-3:30pm *U.S. Pacific Time Zone Green building, ESG, and sustainable finance are complementary market transformation strategies. This workshop will provide participants with a fundamental understanding about connections between these fast-growing areas of work and first-hand perspectives from industry leaders. Learning Objectives: Understand the relationship between green building, ESG, and sustainable finance Review expectations of widely-used reporting frameworks Consider high-priority ESG and finance issues Learn about best-in-class experiences, including development, portfolio management, and bonds Register here This workshop will include inputs from: Chris Pyke, PhD – U.S. Green Building Council Jessica Diaz-Avelar, LEED AP, EDGE EXPERT, GRESB PARTNER – PIIMA Peter Templeton – USGBC and GBCI Don Anderson – GBCI Maria Matamoros, LEED AP BD+C, ID+C, O+M, EDGE Expert, Fitwel Ambassador – Ambito Arquitectura y Sostenibilidad Ingemar Hunold – ES EnviroSustain GmbH Jorge O. Chapa Montemayor, M.DesSci(Sust), B.Arch, Green Star AP – Green Building Council of Australia Brad Molotsky Ben Myers, LEED AP BD+C – Boston Properties Sara M. Neff, LEED Fellow, MBA, LEED AP, WELL AP – Lendlease Americas Laurie Kerr Hugh Lindsay, WiredScore / SmartScore AP – Schneider Electric Kelly Worden, MPH – International WELL Building Institute Matt Trowbridge Natalie Amrosio Preudhomme – Moody's Analytics Parag Rastogi – arbnco Clay Nesler – The Nesler Group Yoon Hui Kim, PHD – Moody's

At ES, one of our key goals for the year is to have a more positive impact as an organisation. Since the start of 2022, we have been using our ‘Impact of the Month’ campaign to support causes close to our hearts. This month, we bring you a wonderful organisation HeimatHunde e. V. and they really are part of the ES family. Anna, one of the members of the HeimatHunde team, is the daughter of our Managing Director, Frank Burchardi. HeimatHunde is a mobile animal welfare association that are travelling Europe in order to help other non-profits and welfare projects. Anna and her friends Saskia, Valentin and Aaron (plus 9 dogs!) have adapted their two vans so that they can travel directly to animal welfare projects who require their support including distributing food and donations, socialising rescue dogs and helping on-site with any work that needs to be done. Anna said, “We are incredibly grateful to the team at EnviroSustain for their donation and support. We are such a young organisation, and this support is helping to get us off the ground. Our first stop for the team is an organisation in the south of Germany who help animals that have been rescued from slaughter houses.” Their task is an important one. Saskia works in particular to help people understand the language of dogs and to socialise dogs before they head to their new homes. With over 200 million stray dogs estimated around the world, the pandemic has only escalated the problem. The demand for puppies during lockdown saw lots of people rescuing from abroad without the proper care or support for the dog or the new owner. Dogs who have been rescued from such conditions often have a hard time adjusting to life with humans and in the home, not used to things such as cars, carpet and even a collar and lead. It is important for the dogs to have the correct training and socialisation and educate their owners on the challenges of rescuing a dog and how to give them the best possible chance. As a team of dog lovers, animal lovers and lovers of nature and the environment, we are proud to be supporting this project. --------------- You can find more information on their website where you can also make a donation: https://www.heimathunde-ev.de Other ways to support them: Follow them on LinkedIn Follow them on Instagram and share their message with your network Share their website with any animal rescue organisations you might know who would benefit from their support.

We are very excited to share the publication of our 2021 ESG report on our dedicated ESG website. For anyone who doesn’t know, ESG stands for ‘Environmental, Social, and Governance’. These are the three pillars of sustainable impact reporting. Respectively, these pillars consider; how a company performs as a steward of the environment, how they manage their employees and impact the community in which they work, and how the company is governed. As a company for whom sustainability is at the heart of what we do, our impact, and measuring our impact, is particularly important to us - which is why we have a dedicated website to report our ESG impact. What happened in 2021? Over the past year, we celebrated our 20th birthday(!), increased the size of our team by 10%, started covering the cost of public transport for all our staff, and offset 151.18 tonnes of CO 2 with Ecologi . Some elements of the 2021 report were challenging. The Covid pandemic continued to significantly disrupt work, with many of our team members working from home. This meant we were unable to provide accurate numbers in some areas like waste and energy, however, we still feel we have a clear idea of our priorities and goals for 2022 (many of which are already underway). Our top five goals are: Pursue the most important needs further In our opinion, the ‘most important needs’ are the needs of the environment. We feel it is no longer acceptable to meet bare minimum requirements for the protection of the natural environment, and we will be working with and supporting our clients in surpassing the bare minimum. Create more (positive) impact In January 2022, we began our ‘impact of the month’ initiative, where we started supporting a different social or environmental project each month. Our support can be categorised in a variety of ways, from providing funding, to taking part. ESG education For more people and companies to take part in ESG reporting, more people and companies need to understand ESG reporting. To this end, we are providing more training and information for both our staff and our clients, and are planning an ESG-specific event for all our staff toward the end of the year. Install a smart home system for our office We plan to install smart home thermostats in our office in order to optimise our energy usage, and collect more accurate data on our consumption. Plant more trees Finally, we aim to support a campaign run by the Berlin Senate Department for the Environment Urban Mobility, Consumer Protection and Climate Action, which aims to plant many more trees locally, creating more safe green spaces. We will also continue to plant trees with Ecologi, with the target of planting 100,000 trees by 2025. Want to read more about our 2022 goals, or peruse our 2021 ESG report? Head over to the website!

Sustainable. Colourful. Liveable. Actively shaping Hessen. The 7 th Hessian Sustainability Day will take place on 29 th September. The event is a great opportunity for young and old to get involved with the various aspects of sustainability. There will be informative, entertaining and interactive activities and events throughout the day - on site and digitally. Consult with sustainability experts – 29 th September 2022 from 2-5pm. As part of the day, our consultants will be available for architects, engineers and students of these disciplines between 2 and 5 p.m. and offer a lecture on the basis of a practical example for a deeper discussion from 4 p.m. onwards. The lecture will last about 30 minutes so that there will be time for exchange afterwards. Our contribution deals with “principle No. 20: Living space is available and affordable for everyone.“ About the event According to the day’s motto "Sustainable. Colourful. Liveable. Actively Shaping Hessen", insect hotels are built, clothes swapping campaigns are launched or intercultural food events are organised. Parents and teachers explain to children which species need meadows and forests for their survival, or work together to remove harmful plastic from the landscape in a rubbish collection campaign. Schools and associations initiate theme weeks to educate about sustainable solutions in the areas of energy, consumption or mobility. Throughout Hessen, people can find out about the entire spectrum of a sustainable lifestyle and become active themselves. You can find out more here.

Throughout the summer, we’re going to be sharing weekly posts through our LinkedIn and Instagram on important topics related to sustainability and the built environment. One of our organisational goals for 2022 is to provide more ESG education and training to our staff, clients, and the industry at large. Sustainability progress can only be made through collaboration, transparency and knowledge sharing and so we hope this campaign will have a positive impact and start some interesting conversations. We’ll be covering everything from the basics of ESG, to various specific regulations and legislation that are changing the way the real estate sector operates. All our posts will contain advice, information, and loads of awesome resources so make sure to follow and tag us with the hashtag #ESSummerSchool to stay up to date and share any of your own insights. Welcome to the school of 2022, we’ll see you next week on LinkedIn or Instagram for Lesson 1.

Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. A country’s overshoot day is the date on which Earth Overshoot Day would fall if all of humanity consumed like the people in this country. For 2022 in Germany, that day is today, 4 May. Five months into the year, and if the planet consumed as we do as a country, we would have already exceeded the planets resources. You can see from the graphic below, where we stand in the year compared to other countries.

On April 1, the Assessment Portal opened for GRESB participation for 2022. As usual, GRESB Real Estate and Infrastructure Assessment submissions are due by July 1, 2022. See the full Assessment timeline here . This year, GRESB have made few updates to the full assessment but they have two new products which are relevant to our clients and the German market. TCFD Alignment Report The TCFD (Taskforce for Climate Related Financial Disclosure) is a framework that provides a set of recommendations for companies, banks and investors when reporting on their climate related risks and opportunities. While these recommendations were originally voluntary, in many countries (for example the UK), they are now becoming mandatory, placing increased importance on ESG and climate-related reporting in line with the recommendations. GRESB is developing a TCFD reporting tool to help companies simplify their TCFD disclosure efforts using data from GRESB Assessments. You can read more on the GRESB product page here . SFDR Reporting The EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) is a transparency requirement for financial market participants related to key environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria. The regulation which came into force on March 10, 2021 means that financial market participants must now report on sustainability risks and impacts at product and company level on their websites, in pre-contractual information and in their annual reports. The regulation sets standards for classifying funds or products as: “grey” or Non-Sustainable products - Article 6 “light green” or ESG strategy products - Article 8 "dark green” or Impact products - Article 9 With strict reporting requirements for “green” funds. You can read more about it in our blog here. GRESB is leveraging its existing data infrastructure to make SFDR reporting easier, more accurate and more useful. By using GRESB for SFDR reporting, your data can easily be turned into valuable business insights when you also participate in the main Assessments. You can, for example, compare performance against custom benchmarks and better understand areas for improvement.

EnviroSustain’s overriding mission is to support our clients in the pursuit of their ESG and decarbonisation goals. Naturally then, we take our own ESG performance incredibly seriously and try to make improvements wherever possible. Here are some of the things we do to reduce our impact on the planet, make EnviroSustain a great place to work, and give back to our community:

EnviroSustain is proud to be one of the sponsors for GBCI Europe Circle 2022 from 4 – 6 May in Munich, Germany.

Climate change is already here The increase in extreme weather events has already been noticed by many in everyday life in 2020 and 2021. For those who have experienced forest fires and floods, climate change is already a disaster. We must make use of the subsidies and options offered to us by legislators to combat climate change as much as we can. To counter greenhouse gas emissions, the Paris Agreement set an ideal limit on global warming to 1.5 °C by 2050. The European Commission is aiming for zero net greenhouse gas emissions across the EU by 2050, as per its strategy paper from 2018. The Global Climate Crisis Advisory Group, however, has already reported an average global increase in in the average temperature of 1.2 °C. In particular, the Arctic has warmed up faster than expected, with an increase of 3 °C since 1860 [6].

Worldwide methane emissions have hit the highest levels on record, an international team of scientists revealed recently . Representing one of the most potent greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere, methane is a major contributor to global warming. But how exactly does it occur and what can society do to reduce its methane emissions?